


fallen saints/fallen stars

by adreamaloud, daneorange (adreamaloud)



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 05:05:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1806352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/adreamaloud, https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/daneorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex disappears into a new city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fallen saints/fallen stars

**Author's Note:**

> Through Season 2. Apologies for the liberties. Errors are all mine.

When it comes down to it, Alex packs three books along with her revolver and _disappears_.  

*

It takes some getting used to.

Alex takes some time before managing to sleep with the lights off; apparently, being in the dark is really fucking terrifying, and the only way anyone can really bear it is with somebody else. What wouldn't Alex give for something like that right now, curled against her warmly under these sheets. _Just fucking deal,_ she tells herself instead, gritting her teeth.

Thank fuck the nights aren't cold; it's one of the things she simultaneously hates and loves about this new city. The streets are always crazy, and in the dark corners there's always someone getting stabbed every couple of nights, but on the whole the city has been merciful--especially to five-foot-nine women who simply tower over most people. Though of course, there's always the money.

It's a poor country, technically, but the city Alex loses herself in is rich; from her room fifteen floors up she has a view of a club frequented by wealthy kids -- eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds filling the place past midnight, their parents' sports cars in tow. The first night Alex sees the spectacle up close, she shakes her head in disbelief; that time, she'd gone as a guest of one of the DJs, and it's been easy since then, slipping in and out of the club, pretending she was under-thirty and getting occasionally drunk. _Old habits with new people,_ she just thinks.

Once in a while, somebody comes in and reminds her of Piper, and once in a while, Alex tries to ignore the gnawing sensation inside her chest. When that fails, she orders one more drink and finishes it in the corner without speaking to anyone; when that fails too, she gets out and crosses the street to her apartment, thinking about her books.

On nights like that, she falls asleep on the couch; book in one hand, gun under the other.

(The first thing she remembers to do in the morning is turn off the lights before drawing the blinds.)

*

Alex keeps dealing; keeps breaking hearts, left and right. At one point, she dated a stockbroker who worked two cities away; her brother worked as security of the club across Alex's condo, and just like that, she was back in the rhythm of it again, meeting eyes of strangers in the dark.

None of it lasts; everything is as brief as the high, the moment, the release. Not that it matters to Alex; nobody told her time passes strangely after prison, if at all.

*

One day, Alex wakes up and realizes this is the longest she's ever stayed put anywhere, barring prison. She's smoking out her window, looking at the streets below. Sure, when she breathes in, it’s the smog that gets to her first, but to a degree it's better than Queens, in that she can actually _open_ her window and look out.

_Look at us, trying to count our little victories._

Weeks later, a book store opens two streets from the club, and Alex comes to visit immediately, scanning the shelves for something new. That distinct new book smell – un-cracked spines, untouched pages – puts a giddy buzz inside Alex’s chest.

There’s a girl at the fiction aisle looking at a Murakami book – tall and touristy, the girl smells like Coppertone and sand. Alex knows the country has its beaches, but she isn’t ready for the sea just yet – much less another nerve-wracking go at the damned airports.

“Anything interesting?” Alex asks without looking. She takes a book off the shelf right beside the girl, who turns around slowly. The girl smiles when she sees Alex.“Been a while since I last bought a book,” Alex adds.

“Been here long?” the girl asks. Alex studies her – maybe in her late twenties, maybe backpacking throughout the region for six months to a year. Maybe taking a gap year after a five-year employment stint. Maybe alone.

 _Stop profiling her like a customer,_ Alex tells herself. _Or a prospective mule._ “About ten minutes,” Alex says, trying to keep a straight face.

The girl laughs. “Not what I mean.”

“I know,” Alex says, adjusting her glasses. For the first time in months, she feels a genuine smile stretch across her face. “Long enough, I guess.”

“Vacationing for the long-term?”

“Something like that,” says Alex. The book she has is incidentally also Murakami’s. “What about you?”

“Backpacking. A couple of weeks here, then it’s off to Bali.” Alex feels her chest still at that; she loved Bali. _Piper loved Bali._ She forces herself to blink.

“You all right?”

Alex swallows. “Of course,” she says, straightening herself against the shelf. “Just something I remembered.”

The girl shrugs, pushing the book in her hand against Alex’s arm. “Here, it’s an old favorite,” she says. It’s Sputnik Sweetheart; Alex tries not to wince at the memory of Piper’s all-too-brief Murakami phase.

“Mine too,” says Alex, taking the book off her hands. “My ex-girlfriend _hated_ Murakami.”

The girl laughs, shaking her head. “Well,” she says, crossing her arms across her chest. “I suppose your ex is entitled to her own opinion.”

Alex nods. “But I loved Norwegian Wood.”

“Everybody loves Norwegian Wood at some point.” Alex notes how the girl trails off after that, staring briefly into the mid-distance like she’s the one who’s remembering something. “Anyway, what part of the world are you from?”

Alex considers lying. _What the hell, right?_ “Brussels,” she says, just spitting it out off the top of her head. “And you?”

“Amsterdam.” Alex catches herself go _Whoa_ inside her head. _What were the chances?_  She finds herself laughing at that. “What’s funny?”

“What time is it in Amsterdam?”

The girl looks at her watch, before narrowing her eyes at it, like she’s doing mental math. “Minus six hours from here, I suppose. Why?”

“Nothing,” says Alex. “An old joke.”

“If I tell you my name, would you tell it in full?”

Alex makes a face, pushing her glasses up over her head. “Depends. It involves ex-girlfriends and black eyes.”

“I think I’ll pass, then.” The girl extends a hand, offers it in a handshake. “Ingrid from Amsterdam.”

“Piper from Brussels,” Alex says, her mouth twitching a little at the strange sound.

*

Ingrid lives near the airport, in a hotel with a casino, and Alex thinks, _Why didn’t I think of that?_ Ingrid asks her if she wants to come try it out. “It doesn’t seem so fun alone,” she says, and something about the look in her eyes reminds Alex so much of a long time ago.

 _This is like sticking shards into my fucking sides and then taking them out slowly,_ she tells herself, sitting in the cab with Ingrid, who, by the way, calls her by her ex-girlfriend’s name. _What a bright idea, wasn’t that?_

“I may still have a lucky strike in here somewhere,” Alex just says, looking out the window.

It’s been a while, but to Alex, everything’s just bicycles. _You never forget,_ she tells herself as she stares at her cards. Another thing Alex is good at: Winning with the cards she’s been dealt.

Ingrid sits right beside her, drinking a margarita. “Are you secretly a hustler?” she whispers to Alex, handing over her drink.

Alex just grins, placing her bet. “You’re about to find out.”

(Alex wins two, three hands before losing four others, leaving the table just around midnight upon Ingrid’s insistence. “Piper,” she’d called to her softly, hand on her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”)

*

That she finds herself having tea inside Ingrid’s room does not surprise her, but the fact that Ingrid invites her over in the first place does. _Stupid girl,_ she wants to say. _Don’t you know I’m dangerous?_ Instead she shuts her mouth, smiling wanly as she looks around the room, warm cup in her hands.

“Safe to say you’re not a hustler,” Ingrid teases.

Alex shakes her head, smile still on. “A lot of things I am not,” she says. “One thing I am though: Out of practice.”

“You’re just full of it, aren’t you,” says Ingrid, laughing. She’s standing at the far side of the bed, folding papers neatly into one bag. “I’m leaving in two days.”

Alex takes a sip from her tea before managing a soft, “Bali, then?”

“Yeah,” says Ingrid, picking up the copy of Sputnik off the table and staring at its spine briefly before putting it into the bag as well. Alex notes Ingrid’s books stacked on top of each other on the bedside table – a couple of Lonely Planet guides, a copy of Anderson Cooper’s Dispatches from the Edge, and The Year of Magical Thinking by—

“May I?” Alex says, touching the book tentatively, scratching at the surface. Already she sees Piper back in their apartment in Northampton, years younger and all too new, an old Didion in her hand.

“You can have that if you want,” she says, reaching for her Lonely Planets. “I’m keeping Murakami. One in, one out.” Alex nods, unable to speak. These days, she finds herself… unusually _soft_. Like she’s too tender to the touch. _Goddamnit Vause,_ she chides herself. _Are we actually going to age this way?_ “You interested?”

Alex takes the book, tucks it under her arm. “Well, I _am_ in the market for a new book--”

“And since you’re obviously already too broke to buy a new one—”

“Oh please,” Alex laughs. “Bad luck happens to good people.”

Ingrid’s room has a small couch, and that is where they spend the rest of the night, reading side by side. Alex leafs idly through Ingrid’s Lonely Planet guide to Cambodia; between this and the Didion, she thinks she can take on Cambodia better. _No surprises, at least._

“Have you been?” asks Ingrid, not even looking up from her book. She reads with her knees drawn up to her chest, and god, is there anything here that is _not_ breaking Alex’s heart? “Hey.”

 “Yeah?”

“Have you been to Cambodia?”

Alex pushes her glasses up, rubbing at her eyes, if only to look at her more clearly. _If you wanna do x on a beach in Cambodia, strangers and all._ Alex blinks, hand on her chest. _This is not that girl._ “I heard it’s nice,” she just says, trying to smile. “Says here, too.” She waves the book around, shutting it briefly with her thumb between pages.

Ingrid laughs. “I guess I’ll see for myself in a month,” she says. “If you’re—well, if you’re not doing anything around that time, you should, you know. Get out of the city.”

“Come visit in Cambodia, you mean?”

“Get drunk or stoned near the sea,” says Ingrid, finally looking up from what she’s reading. “Or maybe both, simultaneously, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Alex starts laughing as well. “What did you do when you were younger?”

“Let’s just say I had a pretty organized young adulthood.”

“Ah,” Alex just says. She looks past Ingrid and stares at the city just outside her window, the lights twinkling in the night. “Never too late to break out of it, I guess.”

“Could be.” Ingrid breathes in, standing and stretching with her book still in her hand. “So. What do you think, Piper from Brussels?”

 _Piper._ Alex has almost forgotten she’d given her _that_ name. “Well,” she says, returning Ingrid’s book on the side table. “I think it’s getting late.”

“It is.” The disappointment on Ingrid’s face – Alex has seen a lot of those faces to know what they look like, even if people wanted to hide it. _Especially_ when people want to hide it.

“I—I’m sorry, Ingrid,” Alex begins. “Travel and I, we’re calling it quits. For now.”

“For now,” Ingrid repeats softly. “Why anyone would ever want to stop traveling is actually beyond me, but I suppose there’d always be incomprehensible people like you.”

Alex smiles at that. “Incomprehensible. I like that word,” she says. “Besides, I’m unlucky, aren’t I?”

“Which was why I did not invite you to Macau, in the first place.”

“Point.” Alex gets up, shoves her hands in her pockets, Didion stuck between forearm and hip. “So.”

“So,” says Ingrid. “Suppose we’ll always have Manila, eh.”

Alex smiles, moving for the door. “People _still_ say that, don’t they,” she says, hand still on the knob.  She looks back at Ingrid, still standing in the middle of the room with a book in her hand. _Different city, different goodbye._ “Enjoy Cambodia.”

Ingrid shrugs, smiling. “Have a nice life.”

*

Alex gets home just in time for daybreak – all its flaws taken into account, this city always looks so beautiful in the morning, with the sun peeking past the clouds and these empty quiet streets. Alex makes herself a cup of coffee as soon as she gets in, settling on her couch by the window with her new book. She’s been awake for close to twenty-four hours.

 _How’s that for pretending we’re under-thirty,_ she just thinks, taking off her glasses and wiping it. Maybe she’ll sleep before noon. _Sleep is for the weak._

As she turns to a random page, her eyes fall on a quote. “A single person is missing for you,” she reads, going through the words over and over. “And the whole world is empty.”

 _And the whole world._ Alex blinks, like she’s trying to _un-read_ the words, then she stares at the letters so hard they fall apart right under her eyes and stop making sense.

_A single person. The whole world._

_This fucking book._ Alex closes her eyes and breathes in, leaning back, the smell of coffee in the early morning air always reminding her of breakfasts elsewhere. #

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about naming the city. I thought about it a lot. I know I'd regret it either way. 
> 
> With references to Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking." The title is from The Fray.


End file.
